Murali Parandandi, Associate Professor of Architecture at Miami University is the recipient of the 2015 Crossan Hays Curry award. The annual award was presented to Parandandi during the College of Creative Arts recognition ceremony, held May 17, 2015 at Goggin Arena.

Each year, the Curry award honors outstanding faculty in the College of Creative Arts who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and service. The award was established in 1994 by an endowment named for Professor Emeritus Crossan Hays Curry, a former faculty member in the Department of Art, who was greatly admired by students for his teaching and his art making. The award recipient will be given approximately $1,500 in a professional expense account.

Murali Paranandi has been an Associate Professor of Architecture at Miami University since 1996. His research and teaching focus on discovering effective ways to engage emerging digital media for design. He has presented papers at several national and international conferences, and his articles have appeared in architectural journals and magazines. He published a book in 2007, Digital Pedagogies, with over twenty-five articles by leading practitioners and educators from around the world on diverse approaches to enhance design with digital media. His research work received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Ohio Board of Regents, Miami University, and others. His students from Miami University have won several design awards at national and international forums for design quality and use of digital media in design.

Murali was recently recognized and featured as an exemplar for utilizing building information modeling (BIM) successfully for promoting sustainable design in his classroom. Read more>>

Parandandi was nominated for the Curry award by John Weigand, chair of Architecture + Interior Design at Miami. "It gives me great pleasure to present the 2015 Crossan Hayes Curry award to Murali Paranandi," states Weigand. "During his tenure in the Department of Architecture + Interior Design, Professor Paranandi has modeled the idea of the "teacher-scholar" that is so central to Miami's mission as a university. He infuses his research into the classroom but also grounds his research in the teaching and learning experience. Murali has developed a national reputation for his work with cutting-edge digital pedagogies, but his heart really lies, I believe, in the classroom and in his students."

Murali's states, “I believe a good teacher must understand the difference between training and education. I do not subscribe to the model of teachers transmitting knowledge to students, but see the teacher as an intellectual coach that facilitates students’ acquisition of core principles and instills curiosity to discover and expand their abilities...I encourage students to get out of their comfort zone and not be afraid to fail. Learning to manage failure provides richer learning experiences and multiple solutions for the same problems. I provide technical and emotional support to create a learning environment where projects can fail, but where students can succeed.”